1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the identification of individuals by evaluation of information inherent to the individual itself and without using auxiliary means, such as identity paper, keys or personal identification numbers
2. Prior Art
A reliable recognition--thus an identification--of individuals still remains technically unsolved. Current approaches are based on individuals being identified by auxiliary means (examples for this are the often falsified identity paper, the lost key or the too often forgotten personal identification number). Nowadays, also passwords have an only short duration, since they either have a too simple form or may easily be found out by unauthorized persons. It is just the last mentioned danger which frequently occurs when an authorization of access is urgently needed and the entered password (supposed to be correct) does not work.
Reliable identification of individuals, however, also means: protection of a local area against unauthorized access. Examples for this are military installations or danger zones in nuclear power plants. Also, the access to information, such as files or secret service information, which nowadays become more and more important, requires an exact coordination of the authorization of access for persons, dependent on their reliability and competence.
From prior art, the analysis of static images is known, such as face recognition, recognition of handprints or analysis of fingerprints. Due to great variations of an individual's outer appearance and also due to the difficulty in providing reproducible recording conditions, said systems show an "inaccuracy" which is still so high that one cannot speak of a "reliable identification of individuals". The identification of individuals can only be regarded as reliable when working with (almost) 100% accuracy.